Should the CIA blog?
A journalist just asked me that question… here is my response:
Clearly blogs are a great way for folks to share previously unstructured, but potentially highly relevant, data. There is no real way to just put the random thoughts of thousands of agents into a database, but you can easily do that with a blog, and people can navigate those blogs really easily thanks to the links and tags put in place by humans (as opposed to search, which is so limited when compared to human intelligence).
The problem in most organizations today is that the folks in the trenches–the ones with the best information–don’t have a voice. When a company gives everyone the ability to speak on a level playing field you’re going to increase the noise level, sure, but that’s a small price to pay for the benefit of getting an honest look at what’s going on.
In fact, I think it would be great for some agents to be blogging publicly about what they are doing, without of course giving away important information. If agents exposed their issues and concerns to the blogosphere they would be very surprise at home much good data would come back to them.
